Substitutes for Ink Utensils

“Lead” and other Pencils

By David N. Carvalho.

“BLACK-LEAD” PENCILS AN EXCELLENT PEN SUBSTITUTE UNDER CERTAIN
CONDITIONS—ITS COMPOSITION—“BLACK-LEAD” CONTAINS NO LEAD, HENCE THE NAME
IS MISAPPLIED—THE DISCOVERY OF ITS PRINCIPAL SOURCE OF SUPPLY AN
ACCIDENT—A DESCRIPTION OF HOW IT IS MINED—TREATMENT BEFORE BEING
INTRODUCED INTO THE GROOVED WOOD—USE OF RED AND BLACK CHALK PENCILS IN
GERMANY, 1450--THEIR USE IN MEXICO IN EARLY TIMES—WHO MANUFACTURES LEAD
PENCILS—EMPLOYMENT OF THE COMPOSITION OF LEAD AND TIN IN MEDIAEVAL
TIMES—BAVARIAN GOVERNMENT IN 1816 A MANUFACTURER OF LEAD PENCILS.

THE black-lead pencil, under many circumstances, is a very useful
substitute for the pen, in that it requires no liquid ink for marking
the characters on paper or other materials. The peculiar substance which
fills the central channel of the stick of cedar has the property of
marking when it touches paper; and, as the marks thus made are
susceptible to easy removal, a pencil of this kind is available for
purposes which would not be answered by the use of pen and ink.

The substance misnamed “black-lead” contains NO LEAD and is a
carburet of iron, being composed of carbon and iron. It generally occurs
in Mountain districts, in small kidney-shaped pieces, varying in size
from that of a pea upwards, which are interspersed among various strata,
and is met with in different parts of the world.

Its principal source of supply until about 1845, when it became
exhausted, was the Borrowdale mine in Cumberland, England, which was
discovered in 1564. About 1852 a number of mines were opened containing
this substance in Siberia and from which place the best products are now
obtained.

The accidental discovery of this mineral at Borrowdale was during the
reign of Queen Elizabeth who made many inquiries about it. The name of
this mineral was locally known as wad (graphite). So valuable was it
regarded that it commanded a very high price, and this price acted as in
inducement to the workmen and others to pilfer pieces from the mine. For
a number of years scenes of great commotion took place, arising out of
these depredations; and the result was that the proprietors adopted such
stringent rules that hardly anything was known of the internal economy
of the mine till about sixty years ago, when Mr. Parkes gave a
description of it, from which I may condense a few particulars.

The mine is in the midst of a mountain about two thousand feet high,
which rises at in angle of about 45 degrees; and, as that part of the
mine which has been worked during the last century is near the middle of
the mountain, the present entrance is about a thousand feet from the
summit. The opening by which the workmen enter descends by a flight of
steps; and in order to guard the treasure within, the proprietors have
erected a strong brick building of four rooms, one of which is
immediately over the entrance into the mine. This entrance is secured by
a trap-door, and the room connected with it serves as a dressing-room
for the men when they enter and leave the mine. The men work in gangs,
which relieve each other every six hours, and when the hour of relief
comes, a steward or foreman attends the dressing-room to see the men
change their dresses as they come up one by one out of the mine. The
clothes are examined by the steward to see that no black-lead is
concealed in them; and when the men have dressed they leave the mine,
making room for another gang, who change their clothes, enter the mine,
and are fastened in for six hours. In one of the four rooms of which the
house consists there is a table, at which men are employed in sorting
and dressing the mineral. This is necessary, because it is usually
divided into two qualities, the finest of which have generally pieces of
iron-ore or other impurity attached to them, which must be dressed off.
These men, who are strictly watched while at work, put the dressed
black-lead into casks holding about one hundred-weight each, in which
state it leaves the mine. The casks are conveyed down the side of the
mountain in a curious manner. Each cask is fixed upon a light sledge
with two wheels, and a man, who is well used to the precipitous path,
walks down in front of the sledge, taking care that it does not acquire
momentum enough to overpower him. When the cask has been thus guided
safely to the bottom, the man carries the sledge up hill upon his
shoulders, and prepares for another descent.

Up to about the middle of the eighteenth century the mine was opened
only once in seven years, the quantity taken out at each time of opening
being such as was deemed sufficient to serve the market for seven years;
but when, at a later period, it was found that the demand was increasing
and the supply decreasing, it was deemed necessary to work the mine six
or seven weeks every year. During the time of working, the mine is
guarded night and day; and when a quantity sufficient for one year’s
consumption has been taken out, the mine is secured until the following
year. Several hundred cartloads of rubbish are wheeled into the mine,
so as to block up the entrance completely; and this rubbish acts as a
dam to prevent the springs and land waters from flowing out, so that the
mine gradually becomes flooded.

When the Year’s mining is concluded, the barrels of black-lead are
brought to market, and the mode of effecting the sales was described by
Dr. Faraday some years ago to be as follows: A market is held on the
first Monday of every month at a house in London, where the buyers, who
are generally only seven or eight in number, examine each piece with a
sharp instrument to ascertain its hardness, those which are too soft
being rejected. The person who has the first choice pays 45s. per pound,
the others 30s. But, as there is no addition made to the first quantity
in the market, the residual portions are examined over and over again
until they are exhausted. At one time the annual sale was said to amount
to the value of L40,000 per annum, but it has been greatly reduced
since.

A mode of applying manufacturing processes to the preparation of
black-lead is described by Dr. Ure as being adopted in Paris. The
mineral, being reduced to a fine powder, is mixed with very pure
powdered clay, and the two are calcined in a crucible at a white heat;
the proportion of clay employed is greater as the pencil is required to
be harder, the average being equal parts of both. The ingredients are
ground with a muller on a porphyry slab and then made into balls, which
are preserved in a moist atmosphere in the form of paste. The paste is
pressed into grooves cut in a smooth board, and another board,
previously greased, is pressed down upon it. When the paste has had time
to dry, the mould or grooved board is put into a moderately heated oven,
by which the paste, now in the form of square pencils, shrinks
sufficiently to fall out of the grooves. In order to give solidity to
the pencils they are set upright in a crucible and surrounded with
pounded charcoal, fine sand, or sifted ashes; the crucible, being
covered, is exposed to a degree of heat proportionate to the hardness
required in the pencils, the harder pencils requiring the higher degree
of heat. Some of the pencils are shaped in a curious manner: models of
the pencils, made of iron, are stuck upright upon an iron tray, having
edges raised as high as the intended length of the pencils; and a
metallic alloy, made of tin, lead, antimony and bismuth is poured into
the sheet-iron tray. When the alloy has cooled, it is inverted and
shaken off from the model-rods, so as to form a mass of metal perforated
throughout with tubular cavities corresponding in size with the intended
pencil pieces; the pencil paste is introduced by pressure into these
cavities, and when nearly dry the pieces shrink sufficiently to be
easily removed from the cavities.

The pencils just described are alike throughout all their thickness,
but in the majority of English pencils there is a wooden holder to
contain a narrow filament of black lead running down the middle. So long
ago as the year 1618 this mode was adopted; for Sir John Pettus, who was
deputy governor of the Borrowdale mine under Charles II, in his “Fleta
Minor,” while, speaking of black-lead says, that “Of late it is
curiously formed into cases of deal or cedar and so sold as dry pencils,
something more useful than pen and ink.” In a general way modern
black-lead pencils, are made by sawing cedar first into long planks, and
then into smaller rods; grooves are cut out by means of a cutting
machine moved by a fly-wheel to such a depth as will receive a small
layer of black-lead; the pieces of the mineral are cut into thin slabs
and then into rods the same size as the grooves, into which they are
inserted; the two halves of the case are then glued together, and the
whole is turned into a cylindrical form by means of a gauge.

The kind of pencil called “crayon” is a mixture of some kind of earth
with a coloring substance. The earth employed is sometimes chalk, and
at other times pipe-clay, gypsum, starch-flour, or ochre. The coloring
substance is yellow ochre, mineral yellow, chrome, red chalk, vermilion,
indigo—indeed, any of the usual dry colors, according to the tint
required. Besides the earth and the color, there is a gummy liquid
required to combine them together; gum arabic, gum tragacanth, and in
some cases oil, wax, or suet, are used as the third ingredient. The
crayons here alluded to are employed rather for drawing than for
writing, but they obviously belong to the class of pencils in their mode
of action.

The ancients drew lines and letters with wooden styles, and afterward
an alloy of lead and tin was used. Pliny refers to the use of lead for
ruling lines on papyrus. La Moine cites a document of 1387 ruled with
graphite. Slips of graphite in wooden sticks (pencils) are mentioned by
Gesner, of Zurich, in 1565; he credits England with the production. They
are doubtless the product of the Borrowdale mine, then lately
discovered. In the early part of the seventeenth century black-lead
pencils are distinctly described by several writers. They are noticed by
Ambrosinus, 1648; spoken of by Pettus, in 1683, as enclosed in fir or
cedar.

Red and black chalk pencils were used in Germany in 1450; in fact,
fragments of chalk, charcoal, and shaped sticks of colored minerals had
been in use since times previous to all historic mention.

When Cortez landed in Mexico, in 1520, he found the Aztecs using
graphite crayons, which were probably made from a mineral found in
Sonora.

The firm of A. W. Faber are the largest manufacturers of lead pencils
in the world. They have compiled a history of this implement of
handwriting which they have permitted me to use in the story which
follows.

The lead pencil is an invention of modern times, and its introduction
may deservedly be ranked with the large number of technical innovations
in which more especially the last three centuries have been so rich; nor
can it be denied that pencils have played an important part in the
diffusion of arts and sciences and in facilitating study and
intellectual intercourse.

To the classic ages and their art the pencil, and in general every
application of lead as a writing material, was entirely unknown, and it
was not till the advent of the middle ages that it began to be used for
this purpose. This lead, i. e. metallic lead, however, was in no way
equivalent to the graphite or black-lead of our pencils, which are only
honored with the prefix of “lead,” owing to the leaden color of the
writing done with them.

Moreover, in those days, lead was used exclusively for ruling and in
no way for writing or drawing; it was employed in the form of round,
sharp-edged discs, similar to those which, it is said, were already used
for the same purpose in ancient classic times. It is only with the
development and growth of modern painting that traces of pencil-like
drawings first begin to be met. At so early a period even as the
fourteenth century, mention is made by the masters of that time, more
especially by the brothers Van Eyck, and again in the fifteenth century
by Menlink and others, of studies or compositions which were made with
an instrument similar to a lead pencil, upon a paper with chalk prepared
surface.

This type of drawing was commonly classed as “silver-style,” a term,
however, which was no doubt erroneous, as there could be no question of
the use of pure silver in this connection.

In the same way it is also reported of the later mediaeval Italian
artists that they drew their subjects in “silver-style,” upon planished
fig-tree wood, the surface of which had been prepared with the powder
obtained from calcined bones,--a method, however, which seems only to
have been employed in exceptional instances.

But in the fourteenth century, drawings were frequently done in Italy
with pencils consisting of a mixture cast from lead and tin; these
drawings could easily be erased with bread crumbs.

Petrarch’s “Laura” was portrayed in this manner by one of his
contemporaries, and the method was still in vogue in the days of Michael
Angelo. From Italy these pencils subsequently found their way to
Germany, but it is not apparent under what particular name. In Italy
itself they were called “stili,” the equivalent of the word stylus. At
no time, however, do these varieties seem to have been the predominating
material used for drawing purposes.

In conjunction with these, pens were used for writing and drawing,
and at the zenith of the art period of those days black and red crayons
were also used on a large scale. The Italians imported the best
qualities of red crayons from Germany, the best black chalk being
obtained from Spain.

Vasari writes of a certain sixteenth century artist, that he was
equally skillful in handling the stylus or the pen, black chalk or red
crayon.

It was this period which witnessed the discovery of plumbago, a
mineral which was soon worked up into an entirely new material for
writing and drawing,-- the lead pencil.

This discovery, which was destined to confer such great benefits not
only upon practical life, but also upon art, was made in England during
the reign of Queen Elizabeth, for in the year 1564 the celebrated
black-lead mines of Borrowdale, in Cumberland, were discovered. With the
opening of this mine, the first material steps were taken to implant on
English soil a lead pencil industry which in the course of time was to
assume important dimensions.

The first lead pencils are supposed to have been manufactured in
England in the second half of the sixteenth century. The raw plumbago,
or “wad,” as it was locally termed, was subjected to the following
treatment: “On reaching the surface it was sawn into strips of the
required size, and these, without any further manipulation, were
inserted into the wood. Strange though it may appear, the lead pencils
first manufactured in this manner are acknowledged to have been the
best—and even at the beginning of the present century they remained
unsurpassed upon the score of the softness and fine tone of the lead.
Although the Cumberland lead pencils were in great demand owing to the
fact that they were the first to successfully meet a long-felt want,
they nevertheless owed their permanent and wide-spread reputation— more
especially in artistic circles—to their excellent quality.

Towards the end of the last century the black-lead pencil industry
was introduced into France, where with some restrictions it soon
developed.

With the removal of all restrictions on industrial freedom in 1795,
the idea was entertained of using clay as a binding medium for
black-lead. This method offered several advantages, for not only did the
addition of clay cause a saving of a large percentage of the valuable
mineral, but it greatly facilitated the method of manufacture, so that
lead pencils could now be offered at greatly reduced prices.

By these improvements a new era in the manufacture of lead pencils
was begun in France. Still, there remained much to be done in the field
of black-lead pencil making in order to do justice to the increasing
demands of art and the requirements of more civilized life.

It is true, different kinds of lead pencils of various degrees were
produced, but they did not comply by a long way with the different uses
for which they were needed. The manipulation of the brittle material
required not only deep study, but also conscientious and skillful
workmen, in order to impart the necessary standard of perfection to the
lead pencil.

Among the various German industries the manufacture of black-lead
pencils occupied but a very modest place.

The first traces of its existence are to be found at Stein, a village
not far from Nuremberg. As far back as the year 1726 the church
registers mention marriages between “black-lead pencil makers,” and, at
a later date references are found in the same registers to “black-lead
cutters” of both sexes.

The manufacture of black-lead pencils, however, occupied a position
on the very lowest rung of the industrial ladder.

But is time proceeded the Bavarian government directed their
attention to this branch of industry, and did all in their power to
encourage it; and, as early as the year 1766, a Count von Kronsfeld
obtained a concession to establish a lead pencil factory at Jettenbach.
Later on, in the year 1816, the Bavarian government established a royal
lead pencil manufactory at Obernzell (Hafnerzell), and introduced into
it the French process, described above, of using clay as a binding
medium for graphite.